Ray's Reviews: Make Me by Lee Child (Jack Reacher)

  “Make Me” by bestselling author Lee Child (Delacorte, $28.99) is another exciting, fast-paced novel featuring Jack Reacher, a well-trained, quick-thinking former military cop.

        Reacher gets in more trouble than virtually any other fictional character. While he’s always journeying to a different location, he’s usually sidetracked, getting into a deadly fight with a group of nasty characters.

        This time is no different – he’s taking a train to Chicago, when on a whim, he decides to take a break along the way at a small town called Mother’s Rest. He’s not really looking for trouble, he just wants to find out how the town got its name.

        It seems innocent enough, but in earlier books, Reacher’s almost been killed when he just stopped in at a restaurant for a hot cup of coffee. 

        At the train station, a woman steps out of the shadows. Michelle Chang, a private detective, is looking for Keever, a colleague, but nobody else got off the train.

        Chang, a pretty former FBI Special Agent, mistakes Reacher for Keever; soon Reacher joins in the search for her missing associate.
]
        Their quest leads to vicious attacks; they must leave the small town if they’re going to come up with plausible answers to their many questions.

        They travel to Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco as the storyline gets more complicated.  An enterprising journalist provides useful information and joins the pair.

        Throughout the novel, the reader is likely to be as baffled as Chang and Reacher. But assorted clues lead to unnerving discoveries about the small town’s terrible secret.

        The plot of this high-octane thriller is darker than most of Child’s books; it delves deep into shadier aspects of modern technology.

        The author deftly uses crisp dialogue and short sentences to speed the reader along; it’s impossible to predict the violent conclusion.

        The series, which started with “Trip Wire” and “Die Trying”, showcases Reacher as an anti-hero up against incredible odds as he fights off determined, often-crazed villains.

         While this is the twentieth book in the exceptionally popular series, it certainly can work as a stand-alone novel.

        If you start reading the series in order, you’ll quickly discover why many consider Lee Child to be one of America’s best crime fiction
writers.

        Ray Walsh, owner of East Lansing’s Curious Book Shop,

has reviewed crime novels and Michigan books regularly since 1987.

Find this book and other great titles

at the Curious Book Shop, an independent 

book shop in East Lansing, founded in 1969.

Curious Book Shop

307 East Grand River Avenue

East Lansing, Michigan

517.332.0112

This review was originally published by the Lansing State Journal on September 27, 2015.